#4292: Criminality and deportees (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: J. David Lyall <david@lyalls.net>

>
>From: markgill <markgill@clas.net>
>
>so, the small number that has been deported back is a large enough 
group to
>change illegal behavior in the whole country?
>
>i think such a statement should have to be supported by real
>numbers.....does anyone have them?

Of course numbers do not exist, you know that Mark.

All that can exist are anecdotes, of which there are many.

This spring in Cap Haitien I was sitting on the steps of the
archbishops house at 11pm waiting for Septentrional to come
thru. Oh, it was Kanaval night.

So, I'm sitting there in the dark, with Jacques passed out
beside me in the flower bed, just hangin out. Waiting.

Suddenly I am surrounded by about a dozen kids. Seemed
about junior high school age, maybe a little older. One of them
is a 14 year old deportee from Brooklyn. He's living with his
grandmere in Okap.

He brags about how he was deported for shooting someone
in a fight in New York. All the other young men seem to
admire his knowledge of the world and chutzpah.
( how do you say chutzpah in KreyOl? )

So, they want to talk to the crazy blan who is sitting in the
dark on the steps. They seem to think it quite likely
that I am a bokor, they want to talk about shanpwel
and stuff like that. I am told that being a bokor is a good
way to get very rich.

This young man admits that his ambition is to be a gangster.
The pwoblem is that he lives in Okap, which is peaceful
and civilized for the most part. He longs to go to
PauP where he can be a real street tough.

Do all of the other young men find this a reasonable
career to aspire to? Impossible to tell, but some
of them surely do.

"You won't have a name,
  when you ride the big airplane.
All they will call you will be...
  Deportee. "
Woody Guthrie